Mur­ray opts for vil­lage life

Asked if there is one more big sign­ing on the way, he replied: “Yes. We have 22 now and we are go­ing to have 23. Paul Pogba is a Ju­ven­tus player un­til of­fi­cially he isn’t.

“We stay like this but, hon­estly, the mar­ket closes on Au­gust 31 but I think my club is try­ing to do every­thing to close our mar­ket be­fore Au­gust 14. Nor­mally next week we will have our squad closed.

“We have four play­ers that we think can re­ally im­prove the squad and not just be one more. This is the pro­file of our mar­ket. A young de­fender that needs time to be a top one but who has top po­ten­tial (Eric Bailly).

“A cre­ative player that we know the qual­ity (Hen­rikh Mkhi­taryan), a su­per striker (Zla­tan Ibrahi­movic), and we are go­ing to get a very good mid­fielder.

“We try for bal­ance. I am happy with my squad. I am happy with the ef­fort of the club.” — Dai­ly­mail. RIO DE JANEIRO — De­fend­ing Olympic cham­pion Andy Mur­ray has de­cided against liv­ing in a pri­vate Rio apart­ment to move into the sprawl­ing Ath­letes Vil­lage, ac­cord­ing to In­ter­na­tional Ten­nis Fed­er­a­tion chief David Hag­gerty.

Wim­ble­don cham­pion Mur­ray had said in May that he would live in a flat with other mem­bers of the Bri­tish ten­nis team.

“I was talk­ing to (Bri­tish ten­nis cap­tain) Leon Smith this morn­ing and he said that Andy has moved into the vil­lage,” Hag­gerty told AFP.

“He’s room­ing with Jamie (his ten­nis-play­ing brother). They want to be part of the team.

“This shows the Olympic ex­pe­ri­ence to be with other ath­letes from around the world and gather to­gether.”

Rafael Nadal, the 2008 cham­pion, is also liv­ing in the vil­lage but world num­ber one Novak Djokovic will move out once the ten­nis event starts on Satur­day.

The Serb star said it was cru­cial for him to have his pri­vacy although he has been with the thou­sands of other ath­letes in the vil­lage since his ar­rival.

Be­fore in­jury forced him out of the Olympics, world num­ber three Roger Fed­erer had said that he was in­tend­ing to stay in a ho­tel rather than with the Swiss team. — AFP.